More MobileMe Woes for Airport Extreme and Time Capsule Users

Apple recently went through a significant round of product refreshes that included the Airport Extreme and Time Capsule. The upgrades to both of these devices included one feature we nearly missed in the 7.4.1 firmware.

The feature was the addition of a MobileMe tab in the Advanced section of the AirPort Utility. The purpose of this is to allow users to access their Time Capsule's internal hard drive, or in the case of the Airport Extreme, an attached drive over the internet using MobileMe. Simply enter your MobileMe login credentials and you are all set. Or so we thought.

For many, this feature does not currently work and for those that have gotten it to work, it doesn't work correctly. It was the topic of some serious discussion on Apple's support forums in early March, but once people could not get it to work properly, the consensus was to give up and wait on Apple.

I submitted a question to Applecare during the first week of March. I was assigned a case number and checked on its status today. Apple still does not have a solution and the problem has been sent to engineering to be resolved. Consensus with the Applecare employee seemed to affirm what I had already surmised - this feature just does not work yet.

It's not known why, but it is thought that perhaps the feature was released before MobileMe was ready. After all, that would not be the first MobileMe mishap since the service was released during the turbulent iPhone 3G rollout last year.

If you or someone you know has gotten this to work please leave a comment. In the meantime even we are stumped and waiting to see what Apple does next to fix it.

Comments

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November 10, 2009 at 11:21pm

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I still cannot see my Time Capsule in OS X Leopard 10.5.6 Finder window when tethering my MacBook to a smartphone. The service supposedly needs Back to My Mac to work but I get a red indicator in BTMM stating I'm not connected to the internet even though I'm surfing on Safari and accessing email through Mail.

I have it working on my Airport Extreme with firmware v 7.4.1.
I didn't have to do anything in particular and am happy to share my ABS settings with you if it helps you troubleshoot.

I am able to access all of the files on the USB drive attached to the ABS both on my home airport network (obviously) as well as from my work network. I can even access the iTunes music folder that is on my home network from work. Both upload and download speeds are pretty decent considering my connection at home is over DSL.

7.4.1 is the Latest Firmware version for the AirPort Extreme. 5.4.1 is the latest version of the AirPort Utility application (two different things).

I've gotten the process to work correctly. I was able to access a USB attached drive to my AirPort Extreme while traveling with my MacBook Pro. While away, the attached USB drive at my house was listed (as promised) in the shared section of the Finder Window.

After entering the needed password I was able to access and launch a movie file that was stored on the attached drive at my house. It opened the file an started to play the movie on my laptop - unfortunately the movie wouldn't play well over the internet (during the opening credits the file eventually froze).

Regardless... it worked for me by allowing me access to my files at home.